These super easy, vegan almond butter cups can be made in 15-20 minutes and with just four simple ingredients. So you can indulge in your favorite Halloween candy treat without all the refined sugar and animal products like dairy. Plus these coconut-oil infused cups are silky, velvet-y and decadent with their rich dark chocolate coating and silky-sweet nut butter filling. Anyone can make these. Seriously, no kitchen skills required! Just grab the ingredients and GO. I even have a helpful video included in this post. Plus a Justin's Almond Butter Cups Giveaway!...

Easy as... nut butter cups. (Because these almond butter cups are WAY easier to make than pie.)

...see!
Halloween. Candy and costumes. Those are the two main things that excited me about Halloween as a kid. And my neighborhood was epic when it came to candy counts. My pillow case trick-or-treat bag would literally be filled 1/2 the way, stuffed with heavy, chocolate-filled, sweet and sassy Halloween treats. I remember counting 28 fun sized snickers bars one year, along with all the other goodies.

When I was a little girl running around my neighborhood in my Halloween costume, my favorite candy to find in my trick-or-treat bag was creamy Reese's peanut butter cups. They were my fave, those crinkly black wax paper wrapped cups sitting on that buttery, waxed-cardboard insert, wrapped in a bright orange-red wrapper. I'd devour each creamy cup in two swift bites. I can just picture myself in one of my fave Halloween costumes: Dorothy, Ginger from Gilligan's Island, Rainbow Bright, Cleopatra, Marty the Pink Lady, a 50's girl, a Can Can girl, a b&w tap-dancing kitty cat, a white-sparkle wand princess or a hula girl - peanut butter cup in hand. Boom and its gone. Onto the next treat.

It boggles my mind to think how much candy my friends and I ate on Halloween night, and lived to tell about it.

But these days I still crave those classic candy treats but with healthier, vegan ingredients.

Giveaway! I adore Justin's nut butter cups for pre-made deliciousness and these would look oh-so-pretty in a Halloween bag. These SINGLE cup packages are perfect for portion control and for Halloween of course. I wish they would sell the single serve bags year-round! You too?

Justin's sent me two bags of these single serving, organic, vegan 80-calories-each, peanut butter cups so I wanted to do a little giveaway to send them away (plus a $25 gift card I am happy to throw in to sweeten the deal). Enter below.

RECIPE: Kathy's Super Easy Vegan Almond Butter Cups

notes:
* You can make however many you'd like using this ratio based recipe. Start with about 1/3 cup of chips + heaping Tbspoonful of coconut oil to make about 12 cups.
* Do not worry about perfection. Seriously, you probably do not even need to measure. Spoonfuls and handfuls work fine for this easy recipe. (see next note)
* The ratio's of ingredients do not need to be perfect. Basically the coconut oil in the chocolate helps in two ways: 1) thinning out the chocolate when it is heated, making it easier to pour and 2) helping it firm up quickly when placed in the freezer. And the maple syrup does two things too: 1) Adds sweetness. 2) Thins out the nut butter making it easier to spoon into the cups when filling.
* You can use peanut butter or sunflower butter or another nut butter in place of almond if you'd like.
* Vegan chips will be labeled vegan or use dark chocolate or semi-sweet chips that do not contain any dairy in the ingredients (look for milkfat or butterfat especially). You could also just melt down a vegan dark chocolate bar (no chips needed).
* I like to use grade B maple syrup, but agave syrup or another liquified sweetener would also work.

1. Heat chocolate chips and oil in microwave for 20 seconds. Stir briskly. If not fully melted after 1 minute of stirring, place in microwave another 10-15 seconds. Stir again until melted and liquid.

2. Heat almond butter and maple syrup in microwave for 20 seconds and stir until thin and smooth.

3. Spray-oil liners or candy molds. I used coconut oil spray from Trader Joe's. Sprays work best, you can sub with olive oil or canola oil spray if needed.

4. Add a tiny - about 1-2 tsp - amount of chocolate to the bottom of the mold or liner. TIP I learned! -> For perfect cups, place these bottom filled layers of molds/liners in the freezer for 5 minutes until firmed up. This will make it super easy to add the filling. If you add the filling to a wet bottom layer some of the nut butter will sink to the bottom and stick when the cups are removed, I learned this the hard way. It still works and is a tad faster, but if you have an extra 5 minutes, chill that bottom layer FIRST. Then add the filling.

5. Once chocolate bottom layer cups are cooled/hardened from freezer (if you used my tip above) add filling, about 1 tsp for each cup. Smooth out as much as possible to a flat glob. Last step, add more chocolate. About 1-2 spoonfuls or until it reaches the top of the candy mold and covers the filling. If using a muffin liner you can make as "thick" as you'd like, but about 1/2" is a good size for a homemade cup I think.

6. Place filled cups in freezer for 5-20 minutes (or until firm enough to remove in one swift piece.

Enjoy straight from the freezer or allow to warm up for about a minute for softer cups.